1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for fabricating a microcapsule, more particularly to an apparatus and a method for fabricating a microcapsule, which enable to encapsulate uniform cell number in a microcapsule through cell distribution, improve cell viability in the microcapsule through fluid exchange, and ensure uniform microcapsule size.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Microcapsules or microbeads are gaining attention in the field of tissue engineering and cell treatment researches as 3-dimensional cell culturing technique simulating the in vivo tissue environment. To this end, the microcapsules are required to allow the passage of nutrients needed for cell growth, oxygen, drugs and cell exudates, and be semipermeable so as to block the passage of antibodies and immunocytes.
Alginic acid, which satisfies these requirements, is widely used not only as microcapsules but also as scaffolds. Particularly, it is used for transplantation of spleen cells for enabling insulin secretion, targeted drug delivery systems, and the like.
Alginic acid microcapsules are formed by reacting droplet using compressed air or electric field. However, in this case, the resultant capsules have a large size distribution. And, expensive apparatuses are required to form capsules having a diameter of 200 μm or smaller.
To solve this problem, researches on fabricating alginic acid uniform microcapsules smaller than 200 μm using two-phase fluid chips have been reported. However, they are associated with the problem that cell viability inside the microcapsule decreases after encapsulation. And, although it is desirable that a uniform number of cells are encapsulated in a microcapsule in order to attain statistically accurate result, the distribution of clustered cells into individual cells is not considered in these researches.